Friday, March 20, 2009

Dr. Phillips Community Doesn't Want Magic Gym

A Magic Gym is Planned for Our Park - Who’s Idea Was That ?
By Robert Kelly

Somehow the County did not understand when your HOA board and the Southern Dr. Phillips Homeowners Coalition told Teresa Jacobs (our County Commissioner from 2000-2008) that we did not want the gift of a free Magic Gymnasium in our Dr. P. Phillips Community Park.

Commissioner Jacobs acknowledged our decision and said she had a needy West Orange County location instead. Other plans had been discussed by us from the beginning for Phase 2 of the park, such as boardwalks, trails, health circuits in keeping with its natural habitat and buffer with the surrounding neighborhoods. Since she vacated her seat, Scott Boyd, the new Commissioner, was reminded when he asked us the same question. But the Parks & Recreation Department has already been spent money to survey our park and intends to build this gym.

The Magic Gym will be over 24,000 square feet, with 100+ parking slots and two bus spots. This is similar in size to the Dr. Phillips YMCA. The building will contain a full court basketball and volleyball gym, a weight room, two activity rooms, a game room and locker rooms. The facility will be open later than the current park closing hours, and will host many functions such as competitive and recreation basketball leagues, volleyball, teen dances, health classes, teen center, after school camps, and summer camps and other activities for all west Orange County residents. When we asked why here, when we have the Dr. Phillips YMCA and the new JCC opening a mile south, we were told the Parks Department needed to pick a site that they owned. So, why this one? We are not in need of such a facility. Other parts of Orange County are more deserving.

Parks Department offered another strange justification in their interpretation of a flawed survey that convinced the Parks Department that we wanted that Magic gym. Do you remember the Dr. P. Phillips Community Park Phase 2 survey in late 2007? It never asked if we wanted that Magic Gym. Instead it asked about boardwalk, trails, restrooms, picnic pavilions, fitness course, multi-purpose center, recreation programs, meeting rooms, lockers. The 12 options offered in the survey never included a volleyball or basketball gym. The write-in answers are more telling. Out of 1,128 surveys, only 8 asked for basketball (2 said NO basketball) and 6 mentioned volleyball! With no gym mentioned on the survey or the write-in responses, how could they assume we wanted it? And they never told us we were getting what they thought we wanted. So the story and the survey is flawed.

Out of 1,128 surveys, only 8 asked for basketball

The Magic Gym is an unwelcome hazard to us in the form of continuous day long traffic load, surge traffic at late hours for the sports and teen functions, and the additional cars and pedestrians roaming around our streets and hanging around the path to Sand Lake Point and Sand Lake Cove. The users will be from all over Orange County, Osceola County and tourists. We believe this gym will not be an asset to our community but rather it will be a nuisance and risk.

But we have learned that Winter Garden has the land, public need, and the desire to host this center on a suitable site in a commercial area. We are attempting to steer the gym in that direction.

This HOA has spent hundreds of hours keeping tourist activities and commercial land use away from our homes. We DO NOT want to accept a night time sports and teen facility inside our quiet neighborhood. It is incompatible because the Dr. P. Phillips Park is a "Community Park" designed for the local Dr. Phillips residents, and NOT a Super Regional Park that a Magic Gym would make it. Our Neighborhood already hosts the school, park and soon another 500 new homes along the one two lane 25 mph boulevard.

Say NO THANK YOU to a Magic Gym. Keep the Dr. P. Phillips Community Park a community park as originally promised and DO NOT turn it into a Magic Gym park.

Robert Kelly

President, Buena Vista Woods Homeowners Association

Rick Geller's Comments:

The Orlando Magic is a great organization and will, no doubt, build a first-rate facility. I would like to see the Gym located where the community welcomes it, and where it can serve children who might not otherwise have regular access to a YMCA or a JCC. The Dr. Phillips Community Park site is contaminated with lead, which will reportedly require $100,000 in remediation expense by Orange County taxpayers.
A 24,000 square foot commercial building does not fit the context of a residential neighborhood with 2,500 square foot homes. Therefore, I question the site location, in direct view of homes in Sand Lake Cove and Diamond Cove, without any natural tree buffer.

The City of Winter Garden has long sought this facility. The Orange County Parks Division should suspend the request for construction bids, due in late March, and reconsider whether the Dr. Phillips Community Park location is, in fact, the most appropriate.

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About this Blog

I converted my old campaign website into this blog. After Commissioner Boyd appointed me to the Orange County Planning and Zoning Board, I decided to use this blog to discuss issues of importance affecting local government, and to expound on ideas for improving our built environment.

At community meeting after community meeting, citizens express outrage and opposition to new development proposals. Citizens appear before the Planning and Zoning Board, fearful that approval will enable another McDonald's with cartoon architecture or another strip shopping center with a massive, half-empty parking lot in front. Attitudes toward our built environment range mostly from dislike to indifference.

The 1960s-era suburban sprawl model causes traffic congestion, traps our children, the disabled, and elderly in subdivisions without transportation, and produces strip commercial development of poor aesthetic quality. We build sidewalks without shade trees despite Florida's oppresive summer heat. We build subdivisions with 60% or more of each house front devoted to a blank garage. Having turned our roadways into highways, our kids can no longer walk to school.

There is a better way. We are fortunate to have real-world models in Central Florida founded on principles of New (and traditional) Urbanism--Baldwin Park, Celebration, Avalon Park, and Winter Park's Park Avenue--for all to experience. However, our zoning codes make walkable communities illegal (without jumping through innmerable hoops).

I am hopeful this blog will help educate about the benefits of form-based zoning reforms enacted in 2010 in Miami and Denver and under consideration in other cities. The new codes, over the course of decades, can change development configurations from suburban sprawl to walkable urbanism. I compiled the links below to provide you with a multitude of sources. I am hopeful you will join me in advocating a better way.

Rick

"The Legality of Form-Based Zoning Codes," Journal of Land Use... (FL State Univ School of Law)

About Rick

I am a partner with Fishback Dominick in Winter Park, a law firm founded in 1935, where I practice in the areas of business and commercial litigation and, on a selective basis, land use law. I taught Land Use Law as an adjunct professor in the Master of Planning in Civic Urbanism program at Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida for three years. I previously served as an Orange County Planning and Zoning Commissioner, appointed by District 1 Commissioner Scott Boyd. I reside in Winter Park with my wife, Gabriela, and four terrific kids.

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Below you'll find links to interesting blogs and websites relating to transportation, the law, and the built environment. I don't necessarily agree with all positions taken by the blogging authors, but generally find them well-informed and thoughtful.